


This is too far for a coffee

by whyspillteawhenyoucanspillcoffee



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesiac Dick Grayson, Dick Grayson is Ric Grayson, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:08:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24330325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whyspillteawhenyoucanspillcoffee/pseuds/whyspillteawhenyoucanspillcoffee
Summary: Jason is not that invested in the sunrise, and Dick is not that invested in coffee. And is it really a chance encounter if you've climbed 10 stories just to see someone?After Dick loses his memory, Jason tries to stay away until he can't. So Dick and him have a coffee date on an unconventional place.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 5
Kudos: 142





	This is too far for a coffee

Everyone measures life with a before and an after. For Jason, it used to be before and after getting adopted. Then he died and had no concept of time. And then Talia came, and it turned into before the pit and after. Before and after Bruce walked away with The Joker in tow and left him to rot under the debris of the fallen building. But that was Before.

His After came with Dick and Ric. No more Before and no more After. Just life before Dick and after Ric. Before he had the had one person in the world who cared about him, and after he lost _him_. 

After the whole showdown, Dick found him trying to limp his way to one of his safehouses. He jumped in front of Jason out of nowhere, and stood there for a moment. Jason didn’t have his helmet anymore. He was putting all his focus on getting one foot in front of the other so he was only alerted of his presence because of the soft thud his feet made against the concrete. He looked up and there was Nightwing.

“Came to gloat?” He said with spite, trying to not sway too much on the spot. But Nightwing didn’t say anything. He just stood there, with his bottom lip trembling. His eyes were hidden by his domino mask, but Jason could feel them scanning every inch of him. Red Hood was struggling to keep himself upright, he could feel the tickle of blood sliding down his body, seeping through his clothes. He tried to move, tired of the scrutiny, of the judgement, but he stumbled over nothing, and that seemed to make Dick react. 

“Little wing?” Dick gasped, and Jason found himself crushed to Nightwing’s kevlar armor. His arms went around Jason, and he shivered, his suit seemed to absorbed all the cold air of the night. _There is Robin's magic,_ Jason though incoherently, when the cold soothed his bruises. The younger man could feel the fine tremors even through their suits. And Jason, who hadn’t known a kind touch since before he clawed his way out his grave, just crumbled. He put all his weight on Dick, knowing he’d catch him, and lifted his arms around his waist to return the hug. He could feel Dick stiffening, and he almost let go, but Dick tightened his grip and started murmuring a litany of  _ I’m sorry  _ on Jason’s neck. He could feel Dick’s lips moving against his throat, and it made him shudder with want. But Dick must have misinterpret it, because he let go, but Jason tightened his hold. “Let’s get you patched up,” Dick murmured, but contrary to his words, he hugged Jason more fiercely to his chest, as if he had no intention to let go, and Jason remembered thinking everything had been worth it just to have that moment.

But that was Before. That was life with Dick. Life Before Ric. Before Dick  _ the accident  _ as Bruce called it, that stole all his memories. 

Jason was on a mission when it happened. A mission that wasn’t even that important, an errand run he was doing to get into Bruce's graces, since he figured he could try the whole _if you can't beat them, join them._ Something that just did not justify, at all, why Bruce didn’t call him the moment it happened. He had to find out weeks later. 

After the Bats drove  _ Ric  _ away with their hovering and lack of privacy. Before he could get to him. After he was gone. Before he had the chance to try to return the care that Dick gave him when he first come back. After it was too late.

So the tentative truce Jason had with Bruce crumbled down to nothing. “If you walk through that door, don’t bother coming back.” Bruce had yelled at his back. That had given him pause. In the hours long screaming match they had, _that_ is what gave him pause. Even when he was on the League, he knew that Bruce had had to care about him to some degree, or he wouldn’t have adopted Jason. 

He turned back to Bruce, and he was looking at Jason with such anger, with such hatred. Like as if he didn’t recognize his son anymore, like as if he was too fucked up, like he wasn’t worth it to know that his other son, his real son, his Golden Boy was injured. Like he was already out of the family before crossing the door to the batcave because he was not Bruce’s son. He was just a good soldier fallen in duty. So after that, he just turned around and climbed the stairs towards the grandfather clock. He got out through the main door, only lamenting the fact that Alfred was already in bed when he left. He left in the foyer the keys to the bike his replacement tuned for him, his new helmet connected to the batcomputer, and the burner phone that Bruce gave him the first time he was accepted to the cave again. 

And then he opened the door, closing it quietly. Its clank echoed in the silence. Then Jason turned and walked away, half hoping to hear someone calling him back. But he didn’t the quiet of the night wasn’t broken once, not until he walked into the city where sirens sounded like screams and grunts like warnings. 

The next night he tried to return his comm to Oracle, but she shook his head. “Even if you’re not working with us keep it. Just in case. I don’t want to lose anyone else.” She choked out, visibly holding off any emotion. But Jason saw right through her, so there was nothing he could say to that. He nodded and pocketed the damn thing. 

That was months ago. For once, the noisy Bats seemed to be good at keeping their distance. Each stayed on their lanes. And Jason wasn’t bothered by their silence. They were doing what Jason wanted, to be left alone. And he wasn’t the only one, from what he gathered Dick had received the same treatment. With no one to check up on him. Or make sure he was eating something other than cereal.

Following that trainwreck of thoughts, spiraling down with worry, is how finds himself in his current predicament. Jason doesn’t know what he’s doing there at 5am. It’s late. Even by vigilante standards. It’s the liminal hour where criminals go to sleep and decent folks think about starting their day. A kind of in between state, where night transitions into daily Gothamite fucked up routine. 

Jason has been patrolling since the day before technically. He started when dusk was just creeping down the gutters of Crime Alley, when criminals are start line, waiting for the starting gun to shoot, when dusk becomes night.

He sighs and immediately regrets it when he feels knives digging on his chest. He has a couple of bruised ribs with any luck. But when has he ever been lucky, so they’re most likely broken. His head was not in the game so a couple of Black Mask grunts got a couple of lucky hits before he knocked them out. The last three hours of his patrol he was just pacing the roofs of Gotham. He cursed the slow night. He heard the chatter and knows that it’s not a slow night for The Bat. But he also knows he wouldn’t be welcome, so he stays on his dead turf. The quiet of the night made him think, be lost in head as he jumps between rooftops. 

He told himself that one can’t afford to be distracted on the job. He told himself that given how much they toy with death why not give in. So he grappled down the roofs and drove out on his bike.

So here he is hours later. In Bludhaven, perched on Ric Grayson’s fire escape. He should’ve been discovered the minute his feet touched the landing. Dick’s instincts would’ve woken him up ages ago, but Ric doesn’t raise from his slumbering. 

Jason doesn’t dwell on that thought and just lits up another cigarette. He doesn’t dare look directly through the window, no. Instead he lifts his phone without turning it on. It’s so dark out there, the breaking down covered with ominous black clouds, that it acts like a mirror. He distinguishes the bed, which is rumpled, but... empty. He does a double take and angles the phone, but no. There’s no Dick on the room. He has a moment to think oh shit before he hears the window whine open.

He freezes. He debates whether to jump. The next building is too far away, and the neighboring one is made of sleek glass windows. The choice seems deliberate, almost like as if Dick somehow subconsciously knew Bats couldn’t very well grapple their way in. Or out it seemed.

Jason debates whether to jump anyway. But it’s too late. Dick has sneaked his head out.  “Well hello there, aren’t you a bit old to be the paper boy?” He says with an amused tone that does nothing to hide its wariness.

Jason almost smiles. But he opts to give his back slightly more to Dick, going against all of his instincts. But it does seem to put Dick’s at ease since his shoulders relax minutely. “Aren’t you too old to not know the stranger danger rule?” He rasps out. He’s surprised his voice carried over the knot in his throat. 

Dick laughs. And Jason can’t help it, he turns. It’s been so long since he’s heard that sound. “Hey, there.” The brunette says and Jason takes a drag because he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“I swear to fuck, if you tell me strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet...” he says. Dick looks like the picture of ease to be talking with someone huddling outside the window of his apartment at 5 in the morning. It’s like all of his instincts are forgotten. Jason wants to be mad, but he can’t when Dick is making the vice in his chest lighten for the first time since Ric happened. Since Before. “You look like the type who’d say that.”

“We’ve met before.” Dick states. There’s no question in his tone. Jason prays that his poker face doesn’t betray the onslaught of emotions that that brings. The silver of hope.

“Have we?” 

“You live here, don’t you?” Dick asks and looks at the younger man just like when solved the rubik's cube Jason for him for Christmas before Ethiopia. For a moment he envies Damian, his painting skills, he longs to immortalize that look, to feel it under his fingers, and trace it until his finger get coated in charcoal.

“Do I?” 

“I’m beginning to think that a preschooler writes your lines.” Dick says making Jason snort an ugly laugh. It’s not even that funny. Dick was never that funny. And yet, Jason’s laughter went with him when he faded from Gotham.

Dick’s eyes brighten, like as if making Jason laugh was something to be happy about. That thought makes Jason’s rib ache.  “So are you a really just sexy cat burglar? Or you just happen to be passing by?” Dick asks again, and this time despite the playful banter there seems to be a bit of Nightwing instinct there, as if it just occurred to him that there shouldn’t be a man outside his apartment on the 10th floor at 5 in the morning. 

It’s enough to make Jason panic and take another lungful of nicotine. “You know Aida? From 6A?”

“Gotcha.” Dick says and nods and Jason lets him assume he lives or at least is staying with the mean spirited old lady on the 6th floor. “Still doesn’t answer my question.”

“You can’t really see dawn from down there.” Jason murmurs with a shrug, looking away as he takes a long drag. Like as if he was embarrassed to have been caught on a neighbor’s ledge just so he could watch dawn. If only things were that easy. 

They fall into a weirdly comfortable silence. In some degree Dick’s subconscious has to recognize him, acknowledge that he’s not a threat. Which is a lie. Jason is a threat to everyone. Sometimes by design, and others because he was borned that way, a burden that will get everyone who comes near killed. He’s a walking grenade, even if they survive the initial blast he’ll get shrapnel into someone’s vital organs.

He hears Dick shift and for a moment Jason entertains the idea that maybe this is it. This is all the time he has with Dick, and it’s just doesn’t seem enough. 

But he doesn’t go back in, instead he opens the window all the way and perches himself on the windowsill. Dick is looking intently at him, as if trying to read him.

“You know my bedroom has a better view, since you went through all that trouble it seems rude to not offer.” The brunette asks around a yawn, with his head leaning lazily against the frame of the window with a glint of mischievousness on his eyes. He looks at Jason with half lidded eyes and slow smile. He looks like something straight out Jason’s fantasies – and he has quite the folder of them, since he was sixteen. 

“Was that... Are you trying...” Jason splutters. In his defense, he’s never had Richie Grayson’s charm turned on him. He hears Dick in delight, and Jason frowns at him fighting a smile. Dick looks so effortlessly tempting. His t-shirt is pulled taunt against his chest, and arms seem to bulge from where he’s crossed them. Not defensively, more like to starve the cold. For a wild second Jason thinks of offering his jacket. But a stranger wouldn’t offer. And that’s all Jason is. An outsider. “Do those line ever work?·

“Nope, but I made you smile.” Dick with a mock conspiratorial tone. Jason opens his mouth to protest but Dick beats him to it. “But if you wanted my number all you had to do was ask.” He says with Dick’s paparazzi smile, the one that was a mix between smarmy and reckless.

“Careful, your egocentric is showing.” Jason says willing his heart to slow his rate. Dick laughs uglily, from the stomach and snorts trough his nose a little, and Jason’s eyes soften. 

“I could be showing you other things,” Dick says moving his brows exaggeratedly, cartoonishly and it’s Jason’s turn to chuckle. He hears Dick gasp under his breath, but when he looks the brunette is looking at him with a grin.

“Doesn’t it ever turn off?” Jason asks putting out the stub of the cigarette against the rusty railing. He hears Dick huff out a laugh.

“The pretty?”

“The flirting, you dickhead.” Jason says without thinking. For a second there he fooled himself into thinking that this was his Dick. But the way that his muscles freeze, and his smile becomes a tense line tell him he’s not. 

“I’m Richard. But people call me Ric.” The other says with an arched eyebrow, almost like a challenge to tell him otherwise, to tell him that’s what not really what people used to call him. Like a test to see if he’s with the bats. Smart, he wants to clap him in the shoulder, but he contents himself by pushing out of the wall, getting close to Dick for a second. Close enough enough to get a whiff of his laundry detergent. It’s the same Dick used. But then he pushes away intended to descend the stairs.

“Cool.” He says over his shoulder.

“And you are...?” He hears Dick waiting for him to answer, but Jason is already looking down at his phone, as if he had lost interest in the conversation. As if he didn’t care at all that Dick preferred to be called Ric. 

“Leaving. I'm leaving.” He says and he hears Dick’s disbelief laughter as Jason climbs down the stairs towards the 6th floor, and prays to any deity who has a modicum of compassion for an asshole like him that poor Aida is asleep on her bed. What’s a little B&E before breakfast he asks himself sardonically.

“Don’t I get a number?” He hears Dick yell way too loud for how early it is. Jason looks up over the railing and sees Dick with half his body over the railing, tracking him with his gaze. Jason feels it like a laser burning his skin.

“6A.” He says with a smirk, and then, breaks into Aida Vazquez’s apartment.

“I meant your phone num... And he’s gone.” He hears Dick say. Jason puts his forehead against the windowsill, as he raises his arms to close it, and he imagines Dick doing the same. Imagines Dick putting a hand on the gaping abyss that his absence has carved in his chest, like Dick has carved in Jason’s. But he knows that most likely Ric Grayson is just in his apartment going to bed as if nothing happens. 

Or as it turns out, balancing two steaming mugs while trying to make his way down the fire escape. For a wild second Jason wonders if he’s getting food to some stray on the alleway or something, but then Dick looks up and their eyes meet each other and the brunette beams at him. “What…”

“You very cleverly gave me your apartment number, which counts as an invitation in my books.” Dick says and that smile is genuine. Jason swallows, he has not lifted his hands from the handle, he could close the window and turn around. Dick looks at his hands up, and then down, where Jason's shirt has ridden, showing a silver of his abs, which makes Dick's gaze turn to appreciating, before offering him one of the mugs. “C’mon, are you really going to reject free coffee?”

“And what if I don’t like coffee?"

“I'll go and bring you tea.” Dick says without missing a beat, looking at him expectantly, still holding the mug towards Jason. And he figures that damage is already done, he has made enough of an impression to not be forgettable. So he accepts the mug and pretends he doesn’t see Dick giving him a radiant smile. “So trade, a name for a coffee?”

“You’re not a very good negotiator, I already have the coffee.” Jason says, cradling it on his hands. He didn’t realize how cold he was until he could feel the warmth of the coffee. He smells it and it seems Dick made him coffee just how he likes it, with a whiff of milk a honey. He grips the mug harder and tries to stop the onslaught of emotions.

“I’m playing the long game here, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want. This can just be a friendly neighborly coffee, and then each can go their own way, and I'll try to woo you the next time we ran into each other.” Dick says with his stupidly earnest expression. God, he makes Jason want to throw the mug, jump over the windowsill wrap himself around Dick and beg him to never let go. The vice on his chest tightens to the point of painful the more Dick looks at him. 

So he brings the mug to his lips and wonders of the times Dick used this specific mug. He puts his lips on the rim and thinks of Dick doing the same. Like as if their lips were touching, if only time was not linear. “Jason.” He mumbles over the rim, and looks at Dick behind his lashes. “My name is Jason.” And if Dick was beaming before now he glows. 

He leans on the wall, too close for a stranger, and whispers, “Jason”, with rasp that makes the vigilante’s heart quicken his rate, and make him long for his helmet if only to hide the ridiculous expression he must be doing. “Nice to meet you, Jay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Bruce is not the best with words, but he does love Jason. Jason is just projecting all of his insecurities in him. Can someone give my son a hug. I volunteer Dick


End file.
